As many of you know Kabam has been battling with auto-clickers/bots for some time now. These programs/bots enabled certain players to constantly and relentlessly attack Smaug faster and longer than humanly possible, giving these players thousands of tokens or massive Goblin kills, and the benefits that come with that.
Of course this was seen by both Kabam and the majority of players as being unfair, so action was decided upon. But the problem proved tricky and a neat solution difficult, although the suggestions on the forums and other places were plentiful. Last week, we were presented with the not that great (to put it mildly) limit on attacking campaign, where after a certain number of attacks players had to wait a cool-down period to be able to attack again. Reactions weren’t that positive understandably, and the changes would also break tournaments such as GK and BK, and possibly even CHS. So from the start this would be temporary.
Today we received an email from Kabam about a more permanent change to Tokens and Smaug. Tokens drops will be limited in the Smaug campaign map, so the old way of getting them is gone. Instead, Tokens will be added to the Calendar, Moon Rune and Goblin Caverns/mines. Also Kabam stated that the daily amount of obtainable tokens would be the same as before, but seeing as it was dependent on effort instead of availability, I have yet to see how this plays out.
Although I agree the botting needed to be stopped, I’m not too happy with these changes at all. Again, non-spending casual players are going to be hot hardest. The Calendar will likely contain limited amounts of Tokens. The Moon Rune is too irregular in timing to provide a constant income of Tokens. Mines will most likely be dominated by the bigg buff players.
And I have seen better suggestions put forward as well. One of those was to have a random element put into Smauging, like a randomly location-changing button in the process. These kind of solutions would eliminate most if not all of the auto-clickers as well it seems to me, while maintaining a nearly identical experience for normal players.
I never was a huge Smauger. I was happy to have the time to farm 30 Tokens a day, and that already helped a lot in keeping up to date with all the new features. I just hope I am being overly negative here and things will be better than what I expect them to be, but I also want to know what you think of the new Token changes, so of course, a poll (multiple answers possible):
Kingdoms of Middle Earth made easy 
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for a player who only plays about 40 minutes daily i can fill 30 common caverns and get 100 tokens… before the tokens where changed i would be lucky to get 30 in 40 minutes… i love the change
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Just want to put my opionion on a few of the changes. First of all I agree that a change was needed. As a player who does not auto click or spend much mithril I feel I should still have a chance at competing. If you want smaug to drop tokens, then just make him mobile (give him his own map where he appears in top left corner, then the bottom right corner, then the middle, etc..) and there shouldn’t be a problem with autoclickers. My problem with mines is they have become very high priority (makes sense). With this new need to mine I have personally found that big players can control all the mines. If you were to reduce the yield and increase the mines, then it would be more rewarding to all players, and there wouldn’t be such a dramatic increase in the gap between big an small players. The big players just starve the smaller players so they’ll never get caught. One positive effect has become the TK’s and activity on the server. Maybe keep the extraordinary mines as a big yeild so there is still a competive aspect but make commons drop 1 token and have a lot more of them. This will also open up mining tourney I believe.
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Great idea to increase mines but lower the yield. From what I saw this morning it looks like the yield has indeed been reduced, whether # of mines has increased I’m not sure yet. I’m thankful I hit hard last week before it was reduced. Speed hourglasses will be in demand soon with all these caverns.
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It was money. It became common to get coins daily in prep for prize day. And the new gear assisting with minimal troop lose made it invaluable to not spam smaug daily. and I’m guess this was noticed when mitheroll sales were lower than ever and logs show prize chests played were at all time high. Go to the most prise chest received by a single and see where and how the coins got acquired. lots of log searching but it lead straight to source. Then it was how to stop this in future… with out upsetting members and causing a major upset.. Cheating… even a thief hates a thief. And capping smaugging to prevent spamming of coins. Oh yea I bet participation numbers were all time high as well…. So a plan to keep numbers high, keep members happy, and produce a demand for resources was needed.. And Bam! Their answer (changing campaign battles to increase higher losses will cause lower players that just have gotten able to handle them placed in a lower bracket)… (but using players against players would leave Kabam blameless. after all troop lost number are so low to start mining, and But as a bonus to them it now makes troop deaths ratio daily excel to tournament levels. After all players game time increased daily to spam campaign. Given they change the agreement I Would expect lower level chest rewards, and lower amounts of caravans to slowly be available. Oh yea new gear always creates high level participation and a need to be productive and ready.. What gear need? Other gear to enhance, upgrades ruins, I would gather next game is getting built and the amount of coins out will change the worth of prizes.. of course I would assume a few big ones will be awarded to every player and after which the rest will be minor, until enough coins have been spent then it will cycle again.. causing a desire to receive a top prize chest. At this point they are watching closely to gather statics and where there is an abundance they will be looking to reduce it. I would also look for a another class of troops to appear soon that will cause a desire to outfit platoons with them. This is there business and it only will remain as long as their is a overwhelming demand somewhere.. My thought has been they should have better chests reward or quantities for sale. Most chests for sale seem week for the costs.. If everyone mines 100 coins daily who would spend 10.00 or whatever for 50 coins? but given the time involved to gather 50 coins why not decrease a 50 coin chest to 3 – 4 dollars? Then prize day it might make it worth the money to try and get another highly rare prize chest. And if unable to it would really make players consider buying another.. Do I like it…. No not at all… But I knew it was coming and I know the change isn’t over yet.
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About to start playing something else. Due to cheaters, I now have to TK with high buff players who cheated and have way better buffs, heroes, and gear than I have playing honestly…to get 2-8 coins at a time mining…I dk it’s just not worth it anymore.
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Mine in commons most people wont bother to flip if you dont flip
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Do you plan to write an article on mining ? Most of us experienced what I would call “strange” ratios when attacking occupied mines. Due to the army sizes the mechanics of the game changes. So far I do not understand 100% how it works. I experienced the following on the same player on 3 different mines. First attack with my best attacking hero using MR on his MR (same army size). Ratio was in my favour by far. His defending hero wad not equiped at all. Second mine and third mines, same attacking heroe but his defending heroes wearing basic equipments (no gems) at all and it ends up with a draw. Both armies left the mine… Does anyone understand the precise mechnics which seem verdy different on mines ?
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I did find it odd when my losses matched my opponent’s exactly sometimes… Don’t know exactly what that is yet but I also tested it out on two different heros of one opponent (both were using relatively similar gear but were about 15-20% apart) and I used my top att hero (quite a bit above both of theirs) and tied both.
Noticed that having un-enhanced un-upgraded gear on a hero also decreases the ratios by a bunch rather than just a plain hero. Hit someone with no gear on 250 hero, I got great ratios (10:1 ish) and then hit a hero with 3 pieces of un-enhanced necro and the ratios were more like 2:1… Used my attack hero both times.
But I will agree the mechanics behind mines are odd.
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Something is going on and it looks to be a glitch in the mechanics. Some players have figured it out but won’t tell. I’m still working on it but I experience exactly the same thing – lose my entire attacking force (both sides zero) even though I have gear/gem/buff advantages, sometimes by a wide margin.
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Anyone else confirm this glitch ? Woule be nice to get Beardmonkey’s opinion here.
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I have noticed the same thing.
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just puting in my 2 cents… if 50000 MR’s attack 100000 MR’s, then they all die, because both sides have enough attack to kill the other. one might have more atk than the other but all you need is enough to kill the units and any overkill is wasted stats.
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I hate the new “feature”. All the mines are stucked with big player with incredible might earned from using auto-clickers in the past. So the new situation changed nothing in my opinion. The big players even become bigger and only small will last for the small players!
KABAM should level all players to start a new beginning!
I´m frustrated and thinking heavily about leaving the game forever!
Thanks KABAM!
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Mining is pure luck. You are lucky to last more than 10 minutes in a mine as everyone is TK crazy. It has become common for players to search for mines all over the map looking for occupied to attack. I see multiple attacks on occupied mines by alliances to overcome the reinforcements, just for the kills. These mines are then abandoned by the payers and watched for the next victim. Huge advantage for the payers and Kabam. Huge disadvantage for those of us on a budget.
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Whether this works really depends on which world you are on. My world is semi respectful on first come basis but foes will be foes and I probably lose 1 in 30 mines. I mined in the middle of the night and made 950 tokens yesterday with a lot less effort and might loss than hitting smaug. Atleast auto clickers wont be able to ruin the game regardless.
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Agreed. Our world seems very respectful for the most part, unless its a TK tournament. I send and even receive mails apologizing for attacking. I think it’s all about the players and the alliances. Our world has had the same players for a long time and everyone ‘knows” each other.
I love this change. I am again interacting with other players and the alliance has a reason to help each other when people attack mines. It has brought some fun back to the game. However, Kabam passed out tokens like crack and got people addicted to smauging and hitting the every present premium. Changing that fun for the smaug farmers was not a good move, and hopefully something can be done for the people who enjoyed farming Smaug for coins. My personal opinion is that this is a war game and tokens should be for something more than mindless clicking. Kabam however gave too much and is finding that once you giveth you cannot taketh away.
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100% agree. My world started out very tk hungry, but it’s already settled down quite a bit and most don’t flip mines. I’m getting more tokens in much less time than I did with Smaug.
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Yes most worlds are very respectful in mining
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Now that we’ve actually spent some time with them, and even been through a Flash TK with these changes, I think it’s obvious to everyone now that the mines are a far superior solution for everyone but the auto-clickers. I got ~200 tokens for the duration of just the TK. Yeah, during a TK. Turns out, there are actually a LOT of mines out there; enough that even during a TK most don’t get cleared. At this very moment, every single one of my cities has 20+ caves around it – that’s 2-3 pages of mines. Crazy!
And since it only takes one mine to guarantee tokens that you’d only get on average from a single stamina _refill_ it’s far faster in time spent playing. Even better are the ex-mines that drop 8x tokens and can even drop Tauriel tokens.
Smaug is even better when it comes to sacrificial gear now, which we need more than ever with all the gear sets we need to go mining with and all the new legendary gear coming out. Nice!
The most negative change is that the erebor vault chest is gone. No more easy epic valtos, renowns, HBC, HRC, 100% runes, and — perhaps most importantly — big hourglasses. Many of these just don’t drop anywhere in the game anymore — outside of mystery chests.
I’m still holding out hope for more campaigns that offer bigger might sinks and more interesting challenges to get better rewards.
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A new campaign addition(s) would be interesting. Could compensate for some of the Erebor Vault chest losses. Getting bulk hourglasses even at the might of Laketown Smaug would be interesting.
With all the talk on the forums about smaller players not being able to keep up, the new campaign addition could start off very small in might as well with 1 hourglass drops at whatever %.
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Mining is awful now only billion might people are flooding the mines and
Purging them. If you happen to get in someone knocks you out. Bring back the clickers. If kabam would not have new gear every week there would be no need to click
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Personally I am not sure one way or the other. I can see it as a bad move for free players like myself but a good move for payers.
It is a freemium game after all and so people who pay should have an advantage over free players in the form of speeding things up and getting gear, and even in the random chance games.
However I don’t think they should have been added to the mines as it means the larger guilds and might players will dominate. With Smaug it atleast gave new players a chance to catch up.
I don’t think tokens will stop the cheaters, they don’t have to worry about sleep or going to school/college/university or other time activities. They will just continue only at a slower pace. Reducing the number of stam pots given out for free on the other hand may have actually affected them.
For example one stam pot and 30 Smaug hits netted me 15 pots, I have gotten more and less. Now if we use this as an average of one every other attack it is just too much, reducing it to one every 10 or even less for example this would have an affect on the cheaters. It would still hit us free players, but still give a time advantage to the payers as they could by more. Obviously this would take longer to filter down but may fix the problem more in the long run.
Again this is my personal opinion so no more correct than anyone elses.
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The changes for Tokens are interesting. And better than before. Now after one hour I can have at least 64 tokens. It takes me only 10 minutes to find and launch my troups. Before with Smaug it was necessary to spend 2 hours for the same number of tokens and clicking manually all the time.
The new rules are for my case more interesting because I can’t spend my time on Smaug.
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10 min to find wht? Exhausted cavern or filled with with players.
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10 minutes — 2 minutes in each city to send out 5-10 miners. That sounds about right to me; maybe a little fast. That’s 50 miners, usually at 4 tokens each for an upward potential of 200 tokens. Assuming about half get bumped (which has never happened to me — usually only a few get bumped) that’s 100 tokens. An ex-mines will get more tokens.
Even better, if 100% got bumped halfway through, that’s still 100 tokens because you get fractional tokens based on how many shards you’ve mined.
Better yet, get the skills for mining on all your miners and you can be out before anyone finds you.
That’s a faster, and more reliable, rate than Smaug ever was. Plus, if you want, you can still go smaug for about 4 tokens per refill.
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Btw Erebor chests dropping at 20% would add up to 72 an hour on average, at an average attack rate of one hit per 10 seconds. But instead of using stam refills we use picks. IMO picks have accumulated slower than refills. So Smaug was slightly faster on average than mines. Plus mines move so clickers are needless.
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Kabam needs a reflection group, and they need to listen to them.
So many people whom are enjoying the game and putting effort in it, like you Beard 😉
Kabam needs the non paying players allso , because they are making the game attractive for paying players.
Conclusion : if they want to continue for a long time in the future…..
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Kabam only think about how can get the game work for them like one time u have to spendddd a lot of ur money to be at least equal with the regular players. Now look on ur screen they always have promotions and sales whr I have to spend money to get methril. Believe me kabam only think about what is profitable for them.
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Seems the calendar drops are below par. Like 5-10 tokens a day?
Moon rune’s drops are awful… At best.
And worst of all, it seems the drop rates on mines was not increased as much as it should have been to compensate for the loss of 4 tokens a stamina on Smaug (3m 20s for 20 hits).
Plus, mines take 30-40 minutes to mine (not counting march times if not speeded) so in 30 minutes time a player could have farmed 180 hits worth of tokens. Much more than the 1 token drop from mines (at best).
My conclusion is this will slow down clickers with Smaug drop rates at nearly 0, but definitely could have been a better solution to this issue in particular although Kabam could have been killing multiple birds with a single stone…
Tokens used to be main source of income but the new Erebors crushed that
Clickers farming too many in a day therefore floating past others
Spenders lost their advantage
Mithril’s value decreased dramatically in the sense that tokens became too easy to attain
Mithril’s actual USD value was increased recently if I remember correctly? But I don’t check that screen much so I have no idea.
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Uh, I think you’re missing some info on the token drops. With 4 or 8 tokens per 40 minutes PER mine, you can send out 10 miners and get 40-80 tokens in 40 minutes. That’s 1-2 tokens per minute. If you do 2 cities, you double that to 2-4 per minute. At all 5 cities, you’re looking at 5-10 tokens a minute, peak rate. That seems to more than make up for Smaug for most people.
On my world, now that word has gotten around to everyone, people seem quite happy with the ease of getting tokens now.
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Problem is the game is to un-ballanced between early auto-clickers and others. The challenge is to get it ballanced again. Why send a wave of 120k troops against someone having 1b troop and all gems and gear available?
As I see it the heavy and early clicker-users first got all they wanted and then made Kabam stop everyone else.
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There was an easy work-around with the “time limit” imposed. Simply attack a different map (not a different area of the same map). Kabam’s initial solution was a counter on the map, and anything more than that counter would initiate a cool down. By attacking a different map, that counter was reset.
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I didn’t know that.
Maybe thats the solution 😀
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After 100 hits for instance you would have to hit clearing the high pass or 10 minute cool down? That could work… Of course you would just have to count how many staminas you used and switch campaign maps but it could work.
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You just need to hit one time on another map. So what I did, was the very first hit after a new stamina was the first map of Smaug, then back to Smaug for 19.
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